For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Leslie Jamison’s Empathy Exams came to me nestled amidst a pile of Little Debbie’s Fudge Rounds—gifts my friends had chosen to soothe the pain of my recent miscarriage. I had no expectations of Jamison when I left my first chocolate smudges on the covers of her debut essay collection. My lack of preparation made … Read more
[ad_1] On the cover of Ripe, glistening red seeds cling to thin lines of white flesh—pomegranate innards. It is the perfect image for this book: close-up, torn open, almost bloody, almost biblical, impossible to ignore. Inside this cover, a deadly pandemic is creeping across the globe, rents are rising to untenable levels, and men are … Read more
[ad_1] Rachel Louise Snyder’s propulsive new memoir Women We Buried, Women We Burned begins with the death of her mother. Her father then marries another woman, moves to the Midwest, and raises Snyder in a suffocating Christian household where religion is repeatedly used to justify abuse. Snyder’s impeccable prose lets us live vicariously through her … Read more
[ad_1] Maggie Smith’s new memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful starts with a postcard written by Smith’s husband to another woman. The postcard marks the beginning of the end for Smith’s marriage, when she “lost the narrative” and “stopped knowing how to tell herself the story of her life.” Smith brings us along as … Read more